This is actually quite a big painting, painted with a palette knife. Up close it's loose smears of paint - it gets more photographic the further away you view it from, of course. You're right, there aren't many colours here. As I usually do, I tell most of the story in tones: the all-important light and shade.

Here's the tuatara is on my wall (I like the imperious, almost disdainful gaze of this guy, and painting him larger than life increases his majesty and presence), and also on the cover of the Systematic Biology journal from a year or two ago.

LOL, well, I suppose I've been around (sneaking, Precious) for quite some time - but actually not very often. As I've said, TORn is actually a great source of information for those of us who work on these films - but it would steal too much of my time to make a habit of lurking (love that word!). But I think you can be comforted that I've lurked, in good Smeagolish fashion, for several years... ;-)

The Valaquenta you made is really beautiful, thank you for taking the time to make it. And it is great that you take the time to talk to us these days. As you say in a later message, how do we get things done. Well this weekend, I don't. I've spend almost the entire weekend behind the computer. There is so much to read and so much to see (and to scream and jump around when something great shows up again, your work brought tears to my eyes (there went another 10 minutes without being able to do anything)).

I have one small question. I heard from a friend that you first wanted to make the maps for Narnia in blue tones. Is that correct? I would have loved that, now they looked a bit to much like the ones for LOTR. And I think the blue tones would so much have fitted in with the ice-age.

My colleague and leader on the Red Carpet side of things is Vic James, who deals with all the nuts and bolts of getting tours organised. So email him on the Red Carpet website if you are serious about doing a sketching tour!

I hope you're loving the library work....gotta be better than the helljobs you had when we knew you in San Francisco. If anyone deserves a break in that regard, it's you, so I'm thrilled to think it's working out for you. Look me up on Facebook if you have it - I'm there.

Here's the Narnia map I made first. The 100 Year Winter. Always Winter, never Christmas. Narnia the way we first encounter it.

But it wasn't to be. Although Andrew Adamson liked the map, he said it celebrated the Witch's view of the world; so.... could we lose the snowflakes...? Arrrggh!! And that's why the official version is the brown one you're familiar with.

I still regret not having cash on me when I stopped by your book at a booth at last year's Comic Con. I'm hoping that this year I'll finally be able to pick it up. My LiveJournal ~ My artwork and photography

NARF since age 8, when I refused to read the Hobbit because the cover looked boring and icky.

So nice to see you hanging out around here. Can't wait to see what you contribute to The Hobbit, that map is so integral to the story.

Speaking of Real World maps, I have a question.

With maps of real places, there must be some consideration for scale and measurement to accurately portray distance. So with all these Fantasy lands you map, how do you figure distance and relations to each other? Tolkien, at least, did some drawings that showed where things were, but you still had to go in and add distances, how was that researched or did you just sort of wing it? And with some of the other fantasy worlds you worked in, those with even less reference points, did you just create the lands and distances and directions that were incorporated into your maps? Peace, Love and Rock & Roll,

I volunteer for this film festival and ran into John Noble there tonight, since he's our special guest this weekend. Anyhow, I mentioned I was Staff for TheOneRing.net and he actually remembered me from ORC when he was a guest there. I mentioned to him that this weekend was the 10th anniversary for TORn and he said something about how is such a great place, a big place. I'm hoping I can get some more comments from him tomorrow, since I'm sure to see him when he goes to the theater, I'm the venue coordinator after all. Peace, Love and Rock & Roll,

Luckily, others before me have researched Tolkien's lands, which as you know were well described by JRR and adequately mapped by Christopher. So where necessary, I made use of the research done by Karen Wynn Fonstad and Barbara Strachey and published in their books.

The clues for Narnia were a bit sparser, but were still there to be found. And in both Middle-earth and Narnia, it's handy to be able to use leagues as ths scale key, since they're a handily ill-defined measure! :-D

I remember discussing the dimensions of Skull Island with Dan Hennah, and making sure everything was placed at appropriate distances - as well as giving the island a true position on the Earth (and in doing so I was careful to avoid plonking it on the epicentre of the Boxing Day tsunami off Sumatra).

Yeah, everyone who's seen it opines that it has more magic to it than the official one. I'm pleased with both of them, of course, but would love to have seen the snowflake one used. I actually made one for Prince Caspian, too, but I've never seen it in use. It's a shame, because that one is very nice also.

One of the best lessons I learned was this: Paint what I want to paint, the way I think it should be painted, rather than being swayed by the advice of others. (For "paint", substitute "draw", "sculpt", whatever). Because this way you get the undiluted essence of what you do; the strongest result. And the fact is, if you like what you paint, some potential art buyers out there will too. Some people's aesthetic tastes and art opinions will coincide with your own, and others won't. 100 people might walk past your work in a gallery, but the 101st person might fall in love with it and buy it.

So, in a nutshell, be true to your own artistic vision.

After that comes the more mundane, practical advice that others are probably more qualified to give, since mine was not a standard path into and art career, but things like having a website helps, getting the right people to see your work, arranging yourself a lucky break, etc... ;-)